When The Ocean Met The Sky
by hazelmistmykelara
Summary: "Ellie reaches out to him without thinking. Alec's breath hitches as two of her sandy fingers overlap with his. "Can you feel that?" Ellie asks curiously and looks up at him. Alec swallows and nods." - To the world Ellie Miller solves the Sandbrook case on her own, but only she knows the truth. A very different take on Series 2 of Broadchurch - exploring an AU of the other kind.
1. Part 1

**Hazelmist's A/N:** Major spoilers for S2 but it's a VERY AU take on S2. There was a story that I couldn't write, but it never really went away. I started typing it out in June but it's been in my head since the days were dark and cold. So this is for SEA because I hope you heard us and you knew that we were there, and this is for mykelara because instead of telling me I'd lost my mind she told the other side of the story.

* * *

 **When The Ocean Met The Sky**

 **Part 1**

D.S. Ellie Miller solves the Sandbrook case on her own. At least that's what the papers all say, what the files say, and what the transcripts and the recordings say, but Ellie knows that isn't true. Former D.I. Alec Hardy knows it too but they're the only ones.

The chief superintendent makes her a job offer and Ellie considers taking it just to wipe that fake smile off of D.S. Tess Henchard's face. Because Tess knows Ellie won't take the job. Ellie had bribed, bullied, guilt-tripped, and blackmailed Tess Henchard into giving her full access to the Sandbrook case, the station, and every resource Tess had at her fingertips with the promise that the case would be closed and Tess's dirty little secret would never come out. It was a risk, but Tess agreed and helped Ellie fill in the blanks without asking too many questions. She didn't want to know and Ellie didn't want the credit. Ellie lies and tells them she'll think about it. Then she takes the stupid plaque, her pride, her reinstatement, and her reputation, and gets the hell out of there. She drives straight back to Broadchurch and that bright blue shack on the water. But it's already boarded up and he isn't there. She considers going back to the flat or the house that she once called home, but he won't be there either. Parking the car on the side of the road, she walks from there.

Ellie finds him sitting on the beach in the shadow of the cliffs. He's huddled in a patch of sunlight that he doesn't feel with his knees drawn up to his chest and his eyes fixated on the horizon. Ellie takes off her shoes and slowly makes her way down the beach. Her feet sink into the cool sand that's still damp from the earlier rainstorm, leaving a lone trail of footprints behind. Each step is harder than the last and by the time she reaches him, she's stumbling. The sun blazes through the clouds again as she stops beside him and her shadow looms over him.

"Hardy?"

Hardy blinks but doesn't move a muscle. Ellie sighs. She plops down in the wet sand beside him and shivers as the chill seeps into her. She mirrors him and hugs her knees to her chest. It helps a little bit but she's always cold these days. Hardy's freezing.

"Hardy," she tries again.

"Nice work, Miller," Hardy tells her and it almost sounds sincere. He still won't look at her. "Out-bloody-standing," he compliments her, but there's a bitter undertone that scrapes her ears.

"Here." Ellie digs out the ugly little plaque and tosses it at him. It doesn't hit him but it lands in the sand on the other side of him. He moves for the first time, turning his head to look at it. A ray of sunlight reflects off of it obscuring her name and blinding both of them. Ellie's eyes water as Alec's hands clench around his knees and his jaw tightens.

"You deserve it," he says.

"I don't want it. I don't want any of it," Ellie spits out through gritted teeth. "That should've been yours."

Alec shakes his head and squints into the sunlight.

"I couldn't solve it," he reminds her.

"You just did!" Ellie points out. "And I can't even tell anyone because they'll think I'm mad –" Alec looks directly at her for the first time and her voice dies. He stares at her for a long moment. His voice is soft when he finally does speak.

"Miller, I couldn't have done it without you."

"I know," Ellie concedes and rubs at her watery eyes. "But it's not fair to you!"

"Ellie." Alec says her name and Ellie's eyes snap back to him. "I don't give a fuck about some stupid plaque, or the fact that you got offered my job, or what they're saying about me or you in the bloody papers. I failed those families. But you gave me a second chance to make it right." He holds her gaze and his face softens.

"Thanks to you, they finally got some closure and Pippa's and Lisa's murderers are behind bars."

Ellie knows he's right, but the realization that no one will ever know what really happened still hurts, and that D.I. Alec Hardy redeemed himself and fought for over two years to get those two girls justice.

"I just wish I could tell someone the truth," Ellie says and then adds: "They should know that you weren't the _worst_ cop in Britain."

Alec wheezes a rusty laugh and his lips curve up into a half smile that lingers as he looks at her.

"Thanks, Miller," he says. He lifts one of his hands and claps her on the shoulder. He barely brushes her but Ellie automatically flinches away from him. His skin is cold as ice and Ellie braces herself for the shock that always comes every time he accidentally touches her. It doesn't hurt this time.

"Sorry," he apologizes and lowers his hand to the sand between them. His palm slides over the fine granules as he sits back on his hands. Ellie watches him, wondering why the wind ruffles his hair and the light gleams in his eyes but he doesn't feel it. She drops her hand to the sand and sifts her fingers through the grains, treasuring the feel of it getting beneath her nails and sticking to her skin and clothes.

"Can you feel it?" she asks him.

"What?" Alec frowns at her.

"The sand?" Ellie clarifies.

Alec glances down at his hand, resting in the sand between them. He spreads his fingers wide and his forehead wrinkles as he concentrates on the task. She leans forward in anticipation, but Alec shakes his head and his hand sweeps up toward hers again, leaving nothing in its wake.

"I used to hate it," he confesses, enviously gazing at her fingers digging into the sand centimeters from his. "I hated the way it got into my hair, into the food, into the tent, into the house, and into the cracks in between the floorboards. But now I'd give anything just to feel –" he breaks off and curls his hand into a fist. His whole body goes rigid beside her as he tries so hard to do something so ridiculously simple.

"I can't," he sighs and starts to pull away. Ellie reaches out to him without thinking. Alec's breath hitches as two of her sandy fingers overlap with his.

"Can you feel that?" Ellie asks curiously and looks up at him. Alec swallows and nods. The sun is setting behind her but she swears she can see it rising in his brown eyes. There's a light burning there that she hasn't seen in such a long time, and she foolishly thinks that it might just be that spark of life that he's lacking in so many ways.

Ellie scrapes the heel of her hand through the sand, getting the grains into the creases and the lines of her palm before sliding it little by little over his until her hand rests over the back of his with a gritty layer of the ground up rock between them.

"I can feel that," he whispers, his voice close to her ear. He's bent his head down toward hers and all she can see is his shaggy hair, lightened to auburn and almost a bronzy gold in the sunlight. She slots her fingers between his own and he brushes his thumb along her pinky. He rubs the itchy sand from her skin and she feels the marble like coolness of the pad of his thumb. She bites back a gasp as his breath brushes against her cheek like the first sign of winter.

"Does that hurt?" he asks. Ellie shakes her head.

"Does this?" she wonders and lifts her free hand slowly toward his bent head. Her fingertips ghost through his surprisingly silky hair and she uses the barest touch to reveal his eyes. She boldly passes her fingers through the shaggy strands again and he closes his eyes as if he's in pain. Ellie starts to recoil but he shakes his head. So she does it again and again until Alec makes a sound in the back of his throat that startles both of them. She drops her hand, alarmed, but when Alec opens his bright eyes into hers she knows that it's a different kind of pain. He leans further into her space and she lets him.

"Can I?" He brings his other hand up to her face and she nods automatically. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as his trembling cold hand grazes her cheek. His knuckles lightly trace over her cheek bone, and her body relaxes and inexplicably melts into his delicate touch even though he should be freezing her. He cups her face in his hand and sweeps his thumb over her bottom lip, forcing her to release it and the last of the tension. She closes her eyes.

"You've always been so warm," he whispers. "Sometimes it hurt, even before…"

"I thought you were colder back then," she chuckles and he withdraws from her. "I was wrong, of course," she adds, and shivers as her body registers the loss of his nearness. She opens her eyes and all she wants to do is take away the pain and the hurt and the cruelty of it all. Reaching out, she rests her hand over his heart.

It's too much and too sudden. He jumps but instead of shoving her away, he roughly drags her into his arms and pulls her head down to the coldest part of his body. It's painful for both of them, but Ellie hooks her fingers into the front of his shirt and Alec twines his fingers in her hair. They need this moment because it will probably be their last. His chest rises and falls beneath her ear out of habit.

"When?"

"Tess wanted to wait until after the case was closed," Ellie tells him. Her eyes sting with tears that'll scald him if she lets them fall.

"This weekend?" He crushes her against him, and Ellie feels that emptiness and that hole that he's trying so desperately to fill.

"Tomorrow," she whispers. "She's going to do it tomorrow."

Alec freezes and Ellie listens to the roar of her own blood in her ears. She presses her lips to his chest and she feels the cold numbness seeping into her. Alec gasps and chokes on what could have been a sob if he was still capable of that.

"I'm so sorry, Alec," Ellie apologizes, fighting back those burning tears. "I tried to talk her out of it and I even tried to tell her the truth –"

Alec hushes her and kisses the top of her head with bloodless lips that send shivers all the way down to her toes. Ellie trembles against him and flattens her hand over his heart.

But it doesn't beat.

She hasn't felt a heartbeat there in over four and a half weeks.

Ellie breaks down and Alec holds her even though it hurts them both. When she's done the sun has sank into the ocean and the stars are coming out. He walks with her up the beach, alongside the rising tide, but they only leave one trail of footprints behind. They stop by her car and a flash over his head catches Ellie's eye. A shooting star.

"Make a wish," she tells him and closes her eyes.

Alec kisses her before she can open them. It's the coldest kiss she's ever received. She imagines that this is what the night air tastes like at the darkest hour, or that moment right before it starts to snow when the world is cold and silent with anticipation, or perhaps this is what it feels like when someone tells you goodbye the night before they're going to die.

"I'll be there tomorrow at the hospital," she tells him and rests her forehead against his. He nods and wraps his arms around her to hold her for one more moment.

It doesn't hurt as much when they touch, but maybe it's because they both know that this will be the last time.

* * *

She doesn't sleep that night but she pretends that she can. He doesn't make a sound but she knows the exact second that he enters the house. He's shown up at her house plenty of times (mainly, she thinks, to scare the hell out of her) but tonight's the first time he's entered her bedroom. He stands on the threshold for what feels like hours until she finally gives up the pretense of sleeping and looks directly at him.

"Are you awake?" he asks softly as if he thinks she's still dreaming.

Ellie sits up and he backs out of her room.

"Alec, wait." He soundlessly returns to the doorway but he keeps his head down. She wraps the duvet tightly around her and resettles herself against the headboard.

"Do you want to talk?" she asks.

"Not really," he admits and scratches the back of his neck. "Besides Tom's here now and I wouldn't want you waking him…" She knows what he really means. He lifts his head and his eyes dart around the room, taking in everything but her.

"He already thinks I'm crazy," Ellie reassures Hardy but softly, just in case Tom is in fact awake. "They all do."

"I don't," he reminds her.

"You might not even be real," Ellie sighs.

He hesitantly steps over the threshold and the temperature drops. She shivers and tries to hide it from him. His footsteps are silent, slow, and measured, but finally he reaches her. Ellie automatically moves over to make room for him on the bed. He backs off again, shaking his head.

"We can't –"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, I'm not a necrophiliac!" Ellie snaps.

"I'm not dead yet!" he protests, and for the first time she gets a good look at his face. He's paler than usual and his eyes are dark and wide and hurt.

"Sorry," she apologizes and looks away so she won't tear up. "I didn't mean it like that."

He's quiet and she's having difficulty blinking back tears. She doesn't want to break down in front of him, not again, not when he's only got hours left.

"What time is it?" she asks him and scrubs at her face.

"No idea."

That surprises her, that and the fact that he's here at all.

"I thought you'd be with your daughter," she confesses.

"I was but it was hard, especially since I can't –" he breaks off and curls his hands into fists at his sides. He shakes his head again. "I should go. It's late and Tom might hear you –"

"Alec," Ellie interrupts him. "Come here."

Alec slumps down on the bed beside her. At first he tries to stay perched on the edge, but she reaches out to him and he's turning into her before he can stop himself. Ellie bites back a yelp as the icy wave hits her. She's not ready for it and he jerks back from her.

"Sorry," he whispers.

"It's alright," she lies. She waits a second and then starts with a hand in his hair. He can't wait that long, and a minute later he's got her face cupped between his hands that are as cold as metal but handle her like she's made of glass. He's shaking almost as hard as she is and yet they can't let go.

"You can feel this?" he asks her. "Does it feel real?"

She nods and hangs onto his wrists, afraid she'll cry if she tries to speak.

"You're the only thing that feels real," he whispers and leans his cold forehead against hers. "Why are you the only one?" he wonders.

"I don't know, Alec," she whispers, swallowing back tears. "I don't know."

* * *

She remembers the first time it happened. Four and half weeks ago, Ellie walked out of the hospital and cried. When she stopped, she got up off that bench, picked up her toddler from the child minder, and went straight to that bright blue shack on the water. She couldn't quite explain why but she needed to be there.

Four and a half hours later, he walked in to find her standing in the middle of his house with her toddler at her feet and his unsolved Sandbrook case spread out upon his wall. Ellie was losing herself in his file and his careful work that had all somehow gone dreadfully wrong, trying to find a tangible piece of Hardy in there and cling to it. Fred was the one that noticed him. Ellie ignored her son, used to incoherent babble and senseless nonsense. It wasn't until Hardy actually went up to the wall and snapped that she'd gotten something wrong that Ellie was even aware of his presence. She moved it without thinking and shot something back at him. This went on for a good ten minutes; Hardy correcting her and Ellie fixing it, all the while both of them sniping at each other until their hands met on top of the file.

Ellie received the shock of her life and if Hardy still had a solid heart he probably would've gone into cardiac arrest. Ellie screamed bloody murder and picked up her son who very unhelpfully pointed out Uncle Awec.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him.

"This is _my_ house," Hardy reminded her and propped his hands on his hips.

"But you're – you're –" Ellie stammered to a halt and Fred started wailing. She focused on her son instead of trying to grasp Hardy's presence in his house when he should've been miles away, lifelessly lying in a hospital bed. Hardy followed her into the kitchen and started telling her where everything was and Ellie went with it. After her son was fed and put down for a nap, Ellie walked the four steps into Hardy's kitchenette and Hardy followed. She made tea; two cups which Hardy didn't touch.

"It's going to get cold," she growled at him. He still didn't touch it and Ellie brought both cups to the table. She slammed one down in front of him and he cringed. She glared at him and he hesitantly slid his hand across the table, and then right _through_ the fucking tea cup. Ellie blinked at him and he kept going until his hand passed through her solid cup as well.

"Stop that," she snarled at him and swiped at his hand. She got shocked again by the iciness of his skin and jumped up from the table. Hardy had leapt to his feet as well, and they stood panting and staring at each other with nothing but a wooden table and a couple of chairs between them.

"Bloody hell, Hardy, are you some kind of –" She couldn't even bring herself to say it. She didn't believe in this kind of crack pot shit. "Is there something in the tea? Have I gone mad because of the trial? Am I hallucinating?"

"How should I know? I was walking through walls, and everything, and everyone until your son tried to give me a unicorn," Hardy said as if a stuffed mythical creature, and a child attempting to interact with him was the craziest thing that had happened to him all day.

"I can't be the only one."

"You're not. Wee Frankie–"

"Fred!"

"Right, he can see me too."

"Great," Ellie exclaimed, pressing her palms to her forehead. "I'm comparing my sanity to my eighteen month old that has imaginary friends. And I'm having an argument with a man that's dead –"

"I'm not dead!" Hardy insisted obstinately.

"You coded three times! And you never woke up after the surgery."

"Then what the bloody hell am I doing here talking to you right now?" Hardy demanded and crossed his arms over his chest.

Ellie couldn't explain it, so she decided that it wasn't happening. Either she was still sleeping or there had been some powerful herbal hallucinogens in that tea, or perhaps she had finally had that mental breakdown the counselor warned her about.

"I'm leaving," she told him and dumped her cup into the sink. "And when I come back tomorrow I expect that this place will be empty and you were just a figment of my imagination."

Hardy rolled his eyes, but he didn't attempt to argue with her or stop her. She picked up Fred and left him with his hands hovering over the cup of tea she made for him.

It was still there when she returned the next day and she breathed a sigh of relief. She got in her car and drove down to the hospital to find that her hallucination of Hardy was partially right. He was alive, but barely. Tess was leaving as Ellie walked in and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

Alec Hardy was in a coma.

Ellie talked her way into Hardy's room and found Alec Hardy also standing by his bedside, frowning down at his lifeless but solid body in the hospital gown. He looked up at her as she walked in and then both of them turned to look at the numerous monitors flashing, blinking, humming, and beeping.

"You're still breathing," Ellie said optimistically to the corpse-like Hardy in the bed. She reached out hesitantly and tapped the hospital sheet that rose and fell with each forced breath from the ventilator. His body was warm like a body should be and Ellie withdrew her hand to the guardrail. "You seem peaceful, not grumpy or cold at all…"

She looked up and discovered Hardy glaring daggers at her.

"Piss off," he told her.

Ellie sighed and turned her attention back to the closest monitor. A doctor came into the room, barely glancing up from his clip board before turning to log into the computer.

"You must be Tess Henchard," the doctor surmised and was so absorbed by the screen that he didn't hear Ellie's stammered denial or Hardy's derisive snort. He clicked away on the keyboard for a moment and then walked right through Hardy to check up on one of the monitors more closely. "You can talk to him, you know," the doctor said suddenly, his back to them and his eyes narrowed on the fluctuating numbers. Ellie gaped at him, but the doctor wasn't talking about the startled Hardy across the bed from her. The doctor went on, oblivious to both of them. "Studies have never been able to accurately prove it, but most people believe that they can hear you, and some even have gone so far as to argue that it actually helps speed up the recovery. Personally, I think it helps just talking, not for the patient, but for the loved ones sometimes it makes it easier to let go."

He logged out and left the room before Hardy or Ellie could wrap their head around that statement. Ellie averted her eyes and wound up studying the pale figure buried beneath wires and a breathing tube.

"Do you want me to talk to you?" Ellie asked hesitantly.

"No."

His reply was immediate but something about his tone suggested the contrary.

"Am I really the only one?" she whispered.

"Tess brought Daisy – my daughter – here last night," he said hollowly. "I thought that if anyone would be able to help me make sense of this it would've been her. But she was crying and I couldn't even touch her." He opened his hands in front of him and gazed down at them. "I was shouting at her and she didn't hear me. She looked right through me, just like everyone else."

"Everyone except me," Ellie reminded him and met his eyes.

"I don't get it." Hardy shook his head. "You're one of the most irritating people I've ever met."

"Oi! Watch what you say, I can unplug one of these wires."

"Go ahead," Hardy told her. "I don't even bloody care anymore."

She stood there with him for two hours. About an hour in, he tired of her attempts at small talk and chatter and started talking back to her. He snorted and actually cracked a fleeting smile when he saw how the doctor caught her in the act of a heated one-sided argument with a comatose patient. Ellie got kicked out of the hospital room soon after that and Hardy followed her out, smirking.

He was moping again by the time they returned to his blue shack on the water. Ellie dropped him off there, and then realized that she didn't have to when he strolled into her flat the following morning and caused her to break a dish. She yelled at him, but Fred was fascinated by Uncle Awec, and Hardy could at least keep an eye on her son for short periods of time when she was close by. He continued moping around her flat, and the hospital room, and the blue shack when she kept forgetting that she didn't actually have to drive him there for the next three days. When he followed her into the courtroom on Monday morning and realized that he could commentate on the whole thing without anyone noticing but her he earned himself a SHUT UP and Ellie received a verbal warning from the judge. She was lucky the case was sped up by the fact that Hardy could no longer give testimony, but she wished that he had managed to get her banned from the courtroom before the entire case got tossed out over a technicality. Ellie wept the day that Joe was freed largely thanks to hers and Hardy's shoddy police work. And Alec Hardy suddenly stopped moping and decided that they needed to take another look at Sandbrook.

Hardy was the one who suggested that she hide out in the shack until things simmered down. So she packed up some of her things and moved in there with the assurance that the rent was paid up until the end of the month. At four A.M. they both found themselves in front of that wall of evidence again and Ellie realized that she had a tool with her that they hadn't had before.

"Hardy, no one can see you and you can walk through walls…"

It helped too that Hardy could feed Ellie an endless supply of very personal information when they went to see Tess. Ellie hit a nerve when she reminded Tess that Hardy wouldn't be in a coma if it hadn't been for the mistakes made during Sandbrook. Then she told Tess everything that she knew and made up some bullshit about Hardy having another file of evidence locked away somewhere. Maybe Tess could sense Hardy in the room because Ellie scared her just enough to get Tess to allow her access to everything, and buy the story that Hardy had invested everything in Ellie before he went into that coma.

Between the two of them and with a little help from Hardy's guilty ex they solved the case in four and a half weeks. Ellie got all the credit even though she stressed that it was the work of D.I. Hardy and grudgingly added D.S. Henchard in there as well, just in case Tess decided to rethink Ellie's source and have her investigated. Ellie was reinstated as a D.S. and was offered the D.I. position that Hardy had held for nearly a decade, and the papers hailed her as the one that had solved a case that had haunted the former D.I. for almost three years and nearly killed him.

Somehow during those four and a half weeks, Ellie Miller got used to his voice in her ear, and Hardy sniggering nearly every time he taunted her into a one-sided argument in public. And she got used to him silently passing in and out of the room without warning, and turning up to entertain Fred for a little while when she desperately needed a break from being a single parent. And she got used to his chilly presence, and his skin that was like ice that they sometimes forgot about until they touched. And it was even sometimes funny in a ghastly way when they visited his hospital room and Ellie spoke to Hardy right in front of the doctors and nurses while they took the vitals of someone that shouldn't have been able to hear them. Mostly, though it was sad, and they stayed away from that reminder that Hardy shouldn't have existed in that form at all. Ellie wasn't sure how much longer they could have gone on like that, but they channeled most of their energy into solving that case and when it was over…

Tess Henchard decided it was time to take Alec Hardy off life support.

* * *

Ellie wakes up on Alec Hardy's last day to find the bed empty and cold. She can't remember when she fell asleep but Hardy had been there when she closed her eyes. What if he's already gone? She scrambles for the time and she calms down. But it's not until she hears his voice in the nursery that she breathes a sigh of relief. She pushes the door open and is surprised to find a wide-eyed Alec holding her son. It's adorable until she remembers what Alec is and that in the last four and a half weeks he hasn't been able to really touch _anything_ except her.

"What are you doing?" she asks him slowly. Her heart is in her throat.

"I picked him up because he was crying and he stopped," Alec answers, frozen. "He just stopped and –"

Her son is roughly four feet off the carpeted floor, and rationally, Ellie knows that a fall like that won't hurt him. But she warily moves toward Alec as if he's a lion that's got her child in his den. Fred squeals delightedly and latches onto Alec's neck. Her son giggles and rubs his face into his's scruff like he's a cat and Ellie is just as frozen as Alec now.

"What the hell–"

"I don't know," Alec whispers incredulously, his arms wrapping more firmly around her squirming but very happy child. "It was instinct and I've tried before –"

"You what?" Ellie gaped at him, horrified.

"It was an accident," he says apologetically, "And all he did was cry when I touched him, but he's not crying now." No, he's definitely not.

"Uncle Awec!" Fred shrieks and pets Uncle Awec's cheek. Alec holds her boy securely and Ellie remembers that he had a daughter once, a daughter that he can't hold or talk to and that he hardly ever got to see in the last two or so years. He's staring at her son in awe as if he can't believe that he's real and Ellie remembers that Fred was the first one that saw him. Fred wiggles closer and touches his nose to Alec's, and Alec shuts his eyes as if it's all too much. Ellie wants to shut her stinging eyes too, but she can't take her eyes off of them.

"God, Miller, don't just stand there," Alec hisses. "What if I hurt him?" His voice cracks.

Ellie crosses the room and takes her son from Alec. Fred starts wailing then. Alec shushes him and smooths back Fred's curls. Fred quiets immediately, and Ellie realizes what's missing, and why Alec can suddenly take away the tears rather than cause them with a touch of his hand. Before he can step back, Ellie's got her hand on his chest.

"You're warm," she observes, her eyes lifting to his. "What happened?" she wonders, searching his face.

"I don't know," he says, shaking his head. "I was with you all night. Then I heard Fred, so I came in here and I –" He motions to the crib and Fred, and shrugs.

Fred wriggles impatiently against Ellie's hip and she puts him down next to the red firetruck that she stubs her toe on every other morning. He zooms off with it to the other corner of the room and Ellie turns to Alec.

"You didn't just wake up this morning and walk out of there, did you?" she asks and hates herself for hoping.

"Yep, took the breathing tube out and everything else they had plugged into me, grabbed my clothes, and strolled right past my ex and the doctor, and out of that hospital," he responds sarcastically.

Ellie smacks him and Alec pulls her into his arms. She grabs the lapels of his coat and he meets her halfway. He doesn't have to hold back anymore and Ellie tastes the desperation, the sadness, and that feeling that neither of them dared to define. She doesn't give a damn about what he is anymore, in fact she doesn't give a damn about anything except the feel of his deceptively warm body against her, and his hands knotted in her hair and fisting in the back of her dressing gown. He seeks her out like a drug, like he hasn't felt anything in so long. Ellie realizes that although her pulse throbs and her breath comes in short but ragged gasps, she's never felt more alive in ages. She thinks that she would've let him take her right there on the bloody carpet if it hadn't been for her son.

She stays him with a hand on his chest and braces herself against the crib behind her. She has to catch her breath and the hand on his quiet chest reminds her that he doesn't.

"You need to go see your daughter, right now," she tells him and taps the spot where his heart should've beat. She thinks she feels the faintest echo there as he draws her in close for one last quick kiss. But she could've been imagining it.

"Mum? _Mum_?" Her teenage son barrels into the room and Ellie steps away from Alec and goes to scoop up her youngest.

"Are you all right, Mum?" Tom asks her anxiously, but his eyes are scanning the room and searching for something. Ellie touches her son's shoulder. He looks at her and Fred and relaxes immediately. "Sorry," he apologizes with a sheepish look. "I thought I heard a man in here."

Ellie whips around to stare at Alec but he's already gone.

"I'm gonna be late for school, but it was the strangest thing, could've sworn he was Scottish…"

Tom runs out the door and Ellie follows fifteen minutes after him, barely remembering to drop Fred off at the child minder's before she's racing back to the hospital where it all started. There's construction, and she hits traffic, and then once she gets to the hospital it takes her forever to find a parking spot. By the time she gets inside she's only got twenty minutes left. The snobby woman at the desk recognizes her and won't let her in because she's shagging the doctor that kicked Ellie out when Hardy recently decided it would be hilarious to pick a fight over his body.

"It's just immediate family," the woman reminds her.

"Yeah, well, I'm his –" Ellie can't come up with a lie fast enough and even if she could tell the truth she doesn't know how to describe her relationship with Alec Hardy now. "I'm his partner," she says at last, struggling to look convincing as the woman's eyebrows lift skeptically. She shakes her head when Ellie doesn't elaborate.

"It doesn't matter if you're his partner. The law doesn't allow –"

"Oh, to hell with the law," Ellie snaps, but before she can launch into a fresh tirade against the unfairness of it all a hand grasps her arm.

Ellie jumps out of her skin at the sight of him. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, and his hand burns through her jumper but not because he's too cold. Ellie glances at the woman, because surely she must be able to see Alec now when he looks so solid, and he feels so warm, and his eyes are still shining with tears; but Alec tugs Ellie along before she gets the chance to really find out. He drags her through the waiting room, out through door after door, and down staircase after staircase until they're outside in the sunlight behind the hospital. Ellie wrenches herself free from his hand before her arm goes numb, and chases him across the lot until the pavement ends and they reach the grassy overlook beyond it. Alec keeps going and Ellie wonders why he just doesn't disappear. At last when she thinks she's lost sight of him, she almost trips over him, huddled on the edge of the hill and hidden from view from the rest of the world that can't see him anyway.

"Oh, Alec," Ellie whispers and crouches down next to him. She places a hand between his shoulder blades and he shrugs it off, curling in on himself. Ellie sits down beside him, longing to close the distance between them, but not wanting to add to the pain that he's obviously in right now.

"I meant to be here earlier, but I got stuck in traffic, and then that bitch at the desk –"

"Tess wouldn't have let you in anyway," Alec says with a strangled laugh before going on bitterly, "She's busy making amends right now with a body that can't hear her, but she didn't even bring Daisy and neither one of them could see me or hear me or feel me. And Dave, Dave's in there for support." He starts laughing, really laughing then, hysterically, and Ellie knows he's cracking wide open and breaking apart.

"You should go back in there," she suggests nervously, knowing that she's dangerously close to her own breaking point, "Maybe –"

"I can't do it!" Alec spat. His voice is hoarse from the rough sound of his hysterical laughter that's gone completely. "I can't just stand there and watch myself die. I can't, Ellie, I don't want to. I don't want to die." His voice cracks as he looks at her and he blurs before her as her own eyes fill with tears. He grabs her then and kisses her so hard that it hurts. And then he's easing up and Ellie tastes the salt of his tears or hers and feels that warmth that he's been lacking for so long that it's searing now.

"How much longer?"

"I don't know," he whispers but his voice is harsh against her ear.

"What'll happen do you think?" Ellie blurts out, grasping at straws as she seeks out one more glimmer of hope. "Do you think I'll still be able to –"

Alec shakes his head and makes a sound that shatters that last shard of hope that she's been clinging to ever since Tess shattered whatever the hell this is when she announced that she was taking Alec off of life support. He wraps his arms around her and Ellie feels herself falling fast and hard for this man that she didn't know she wanted or needed this much until it was too late. He leans more and more into her until she's tipping backwards into the grass, and pulling him down with her.

"Thank you," he whispers, voice shaking as he breaks the kiss and rests his forehead against hers. His arms are trembling and he won't be able to hold himself up above her for much longer. The sun is shining behind him and _through_ him, and Ellie's heart sinks. "Ellie, I –"

"Don't you fucking die on me!" Ellie hisses and drags him closer for one last kiss. "Please, stay with me. _Alec_!" For one second, she swears she feels the beat of his heart against her chest, but then her heart is racing out of control as he collapses on top of her and she can barely feel the weight of him at all.

"Take care of yourself, Miller," he says faintly. Then he's slipping away from her no matter how tightly she tries to hang onto him. Ellie cries until her eyes are finally dry and she can't delude herself any longer.

Alec's gone and she's alone again.

She blinks up at the blinding sunlight as she sits up in the grass. She can feel the heat of the sun and she thinks she'll never forget the searing warmth of him in those final seconds before he faded away.

* * *

 **A/N:** There is a second part written by me AND mykelara. I take FULL responsibility for any errors or insanity in the first part. By the time episode 02x05 of Broadchurch aired in the US, I was well aware of the sentiment that it seemed like Ellie was set up to solve Sandbrook if Alec died. I took that and put my own AU spin on it. I know that people have done similar ideas and coma scenarios before, but it never really struck me until I actually went through it and experienced it myself. I hope that NONE of you ever have to go through anything like that. I tried to convince myself that this individual was somewhere, ANYWHERE other than that hospital bed connected to a machine that measured brainwaves and surrounded by sobbing loved ones and I started to wonder and _hope_ … Obviously it wasn't something I could put into words but Broadchurch helped and Ellie and Alec and finally mykelara gave a voice to everything that I couldn't quite translate. So thank you mykelara for continuing the story, and I'm sorry SEA for putting sand in your bed when we were kids even though I knew you hated sand, but more importantly I want you to know that _I love you_.


	2. Part 2

**Hazelmist's A/N:** _Wow_. I wasn't expecting that kind of response. I'm at a loss for words. All I can say is THANK YOU! And you may thank mykelara for this part.

 **Mykelara's A/N:** First, thank you everyone for reading and commenting! When I read Part 1 for the first time I reacted like so many of you have… the feelings almost overwhelmed me and I was a puddle of crying goo somewhere in a corner, left speechless and astounded. And then I begged hazelmist to not leave it at that… so she didn't… and because I wanted to thank her for this wonderful gift I added something… and that's how Part 2 came about… Thank you hazelmist for this story – it's special in every way.

* * *

 **When The Ocean Met The Sky**

 **Part 2**

 _~~~ ELLIE ~~~_

It's a bloody miracle that he wakes up at all.

She sees him three days later, barely conscious and hardly lucid. His eyes widen and he grasps her fingers so hard that Ellie loses feeling in them; but then the heart monitor goes off, and Hardy drops her hand and his gaze as two nurses come storming in and Tess escorts her from the room. Tess tells Ellie it might be best if she didn't come back and Ellie almost agrees with her. She sneaks in two days later anyway. Ellie doesn't know what drugs they have him on, but this time he meets her with dull eyes and he recoils when she tries to touch him. It takes a third painful visit when his eyes are clearer and he can manage some form of non-verbal communication for her to realize that Hardy doesn't remember anything past the moment when he had a heart attack in a fucking field of bluebells because she insisted that he takes her to the river where he found Pippa. Ellie tries visiting a few more times but it's obvious that Hardy doesn't want her there anymore than Tess does and so she stops.

She moves on with her life and allows him to move on with his. She takes a new D.I. position in a new town and creates a new life for herself and her two sons. And the months pass and the seasons change and every once in a while she'll forget herself and start talking out loud, only to realize that there's no one there to listen. Or she'll feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and think he's dropped in to scare the hell out of her again. Or she'll get an electric shock and think of him and how in the end it didn't hurt at all. His absence hurts more. Sometimes she thinks for a fleeting moment that she'd rather have him be dead, and then she berates herself and she moves on.

Until one year later, she looks up and he's standing right in front of her.

* * *

 _~~~~DAISY~~~~_

Daisy finally finds Alec huddled over a piece of paper, sitting at the garden table under the old willow tree. She has been searching the whole house for him and got worried for a moment that he might have wandered off, getting lost again like he had so many times after he came back from rehab. But then that hasn't happened in quite a while now.

* * *

When he was finally ready to be discharged from the rehab facility, it had taken some convincing on hers and Tess's part to persuade him to come and live with them until he was ready to be on his own again. And then he just kind of stayed. Daisy realized it had more to do with him feeling adrift and too dysfunctional than with anything that resembled the family she once had. Her mother was still dating Dave. The two men tried to stay out of each other's way but now and then they had their run ins.

Like that time when her father had left the house, without his keys, phone or wallet and they ended up calling it in as he was nowhere to be found. Dave was the lucky person to spot him in the shopping center, staring at a travel agency's pictures of the English West Coast. When Dave approached Alec, he sure didn't expect the somewhat physically impaired man to turn around swiftly, snarl at him that he fucked his wife and punch him hard in the face. Dave ended up with a broken nose and needed to be stitched up. Tess was furious and Alec was silent, not able to express what he never had been able to speak about even before his verbal skills had been decimated to a ridiculously poor level by the brain injury that the cardiac arrest and coma had caused. She let him stay though after Daisy had pleaded with her, well more like sent her on a serious guilt trip.

Alec had wanted to leave after that incident. Daisy didn't have any illusion about that. But he had nowhere to go. It was painful to watch. He was trying so hard to find his way back to the life he had before but the process was slow. His impatience wasn't helping him. One time he confided in her, pushing his abilities with every word he could get out, how infuriatingly frustrated he was that he couldn't talk. To her surprise he even made a sarcastic joke how he who had the reputation of being tight-lipped and having poor social skills finally had an excuse. And then he cried, overwhelmed by his own emotions that now were surfacing so much more than they ever did before.

It was bitter irony that on one hand he lacked the ability to hide his feelings like he used to but on the other hand he couldn't share them even if he wanted to. He hated it. His brain, although injured, was still as sharp as it had been before with the exception of his inability to voice his thoughts. Over time, he was able to gain better control over the emotional instability and the occasional moments of disorientation until only the physical impairment and the speech impediment were left.

He had survived against all odds, time and time again but for what seemed a cruel joke of nature, leaving him almost more isolated than he had been before. Daisy comforted him as much as she could and she wanted to believe that that was why he didn't leave. But she knew better. There was nothing to do for him, nothing to occupy his locked in thoughts with. It was slowly but surely killing him.

It had taken Daisy many weeks to tease all of this out of him and much more patience than she thought the two of them could have. They discovered in the process that he had days when he was able to write down some of the words he wasn't able to articulate. His face had lit up and Daisy's heart warmed for her father whose last few years had been nothing but a constant struggle and every victory however small it might be, was a victory over the odds.

* * *

One night, she found him staring into the sky, miles away with his thoughts and when she gently touched his arm, he jumped and passed out when the defibrillator inside his pacemaker shocked him back into a normal heart rhythm. Daisy was scared as hell but what was even scarier was when he came to. He was utterly disoriented and kept calling her Ellie, telling her he was sorry for leaving and that he didn't want to die. His left hand that had been rendered useless after the coma clawed into her arm and left a deep red angry mark once he finally let go.

The trip to A&E resulted in a hospitalization and a drugged up Alec. Daisy was watching him, having a daft smile on his face that she hadn't seen from since before the Sandbrook case. She felt compelled to ask him, if he remembered anything. All she wanted to know was, if he recalled the moment she had startled him as he seemed so out of it then. What had he been doing standing out in the cold with only his T-shirt and pajamas on? She had been worried. And she wanted to know why he kept calling her Ellie.

Daisy could never know if he simply misunderstood or if his drugged mind was less reclusive than normal. Whatever the reason was, he started telling her about the coma. He had never done so before. He talked about the dreams he had been experiencing, about visiting her and others, about hugging a little boy and playing with him. About not being able to feel anything, nobody being able to hear him and understand him. Then he broke out in a hysterical laugh and cry at the same time, amused about the fact that in a way his life wasn't so different now. That was when the nurse came and gave him some more sedation, effectively putting him to sleep. Before he was entirely gone though, he mumbled how Ellie was the only one who always saw him, who he could still touch.

He never spoke about it again. Until the day she walked in on a fight between her parents. Tess was yelling at Alec about the Sandbrook case. He was trying to yell back but was so upset that all that happened was him opening his mouth and having to shut it again. Tears of frustration were shooting in his eyes. He closed them, breathing hard, a deep frown etched into his forehead. The effort it cost him to bring his thoughts into the open made him sweat.

"I need to know how..." he broke off, struggling harder. He was so frustrated that he hurled the glass that was in front of him to the ground.

That was when her mother told him he needed to leave and that she couldn't deal with him any longer. That she was sorry for what happened and that he could stay until he found his own place to but that it was time to move on. She left him standing there, shaking with his rage and frustration amidst the shattered glass that he would have trouble cleaning up by himself.

Daisy waited until she had left and then took him by his good hand - he hated being touched on his left - led him to the table and sat him down. She stroked his back until he had calmed down some and then pulled him into a hug. She had learned that it worked better to comfort him without words taking away the stress of him feeling obligated to respond.

"Dad, I know you've been only staying because you had nowhere else to be. But maybe it's time to try and answer all those questions you have. About Sandbrook, about your dreams, about why you keep feeling pulled towards the beach without knowing why. Maybe it's time you talked to Ellie."

His head snapped up and there was a fire in his eyes she hadn't seen since he had woken up almost a year ago. He couldn't say anything but nodded, tears welling up in his hazel eyes.

* * *

That had been a week ago. She steps up to him, making sure to be loud enough so he will hear her coming. No more startling. His head turns and he smiles at her. He beckons her to sit down, then wordlessly pushes over the paper he has been writing on. She reads it and her eyes widen with disbelief. His words are jumbled and at times the spelling is so bad that she has to guess what he means, but still the overall story is clear. A shiver runs down her spine. She lifts her face to meet his anxious gaze. His eyes are wide and fearful of the dismissal he expects.

"Did you visit me as well?" she whispers, not able to have any other thought than that. He nods.

"Many times."

"Did you come on the day Mum had them turn off the ventilator?" Her voice is trembling now. She would have never told him about that morning but now it is different.

"The morning. I… came then," he manages to get out. "Ellie sent me."

She buries her face in her hands, crying uncontrollably now, just as much as she had that morning. And just like then his arm comes around her shoulders and he absentmindedly hums the song for her that he used to sing to console her when she was a small child. He pulls her closer until she can barely breathe. She feels his hot body under her cheek and the memory from that morning was almost as if it had come to flesh. She calms down enough to talk.

"I wanted to come, Dad. Mum didn't let me. She said it would be too hard on me. I was sitting on my bed crying and then…" Her voice breaks and she starts sobbing again.

"Hush, darlin'." Daisy's head snaps up and she stares at him. He smiles through his own tears and for the first time in many months he looks happy. Because he hasn't been able to call her that since he woke up.

"When did you remember?" she asks quietly. She is sure now that all those moments when he seemed so far away and not connected with the world are related to what he had experienced. It must have been so confusing and disconcerting at the same time. And he had no recourse to really talk about it. He must have been thinking he was going mad. She sure would have.

"When the thing went off." He closes his eyes, concentrating on the elusive words. "When I woke up… thought I was… just with Ellie." He brushes his hand over her cheek, a sad smile curling up his lips. "'M sorry, I scared you that day."

"I guess I scared you first," she jokes and they both laugh. He pulls her close again and they sit in silence for a while.

A thought is taking hold in Daisy's mind. What if he truly has experienced all of this? What if Ellie shared those weeks with him? She suddenly jerks forward, grabbing the piece of paper he has written his confession on. He frowns, opens his mouth, but closes it again, pressing his lips together in frustration.

"Dad, you have to go and talk to Ellie. You have to find out if it's true or not." She sticks the paper under his nose. He lets go of her, shaking his head.

"How?" He struggles with the words. "Can't talk enough… to explain. She'll think I'm mad."

"Ask her how she solved Sandbrook. Ask her how she did it. You have to. If any of this was real, then you can't let it go. Not after what happened on the beach and the morning that Mum ended everything." His piercing stare makes her reflect upon her odd choice of words. She doesn't correct herself though, because in a way that was how she has felt for the past year. Granted her father had survived but that in and itself is a miracle. And then it dawns on her.

"You came back for Ellie. You couldn't leave her. You have to go. This is why you're still here. I'll help you set things up. I'll get you a hotel, the train and everything. Dad, there have been too many missed moments in your life, you can't let this one go by."

He is pale now and just like a few days ago when he was arguing with her mother, there is sweat pooling over his eyebrows. Daisy snatches his wrist. His pulse is fast but steady. It isn't his heart, so it must be something else.

"What if… she… she…" He groans and balls his right hand into a fist, his left getting stuck somewhere in the motion. "What if she has found someone else?" he blurted out suddenly, a single correct sentence. His dumbfounded face at his own accomplishment is priceless and Daisy laughs despite the seriousness of the moment. He grins and blushes.

"See, she's already doing wonders for you. You'll travel tomorrow. No more discussion."

* * *

 _~~~~ELLIE~~~~_

She looks up and he's standing right in front of her.

For a moment, it seems as if no time has passed at all. Ellie doesn't even know what she says but when she grabs her jacket, Alec silently falls into step with her. And Ellie talks and talks as they step out into the sunlight and walk down to the water, and Alec barely meets her eye and doesn't say a word, but he's _with_ her. It isn't until Ellie finally runs out of breath as they sit down on a bench overlooking the water that Ellie realizes why. She looks at him and it isn't the same man from Broadchurch or that man that latched onto her when he was dying and the rest of the world was fading. She misses _that_ man because he talked to her, he laughed at her, and he desperately needed her and at the end, Ellie could almost pretend that he might've even _wanted_ her. But this man is a complete stranger. Four and a half weeks in a coma after a heart attack and emergency pacemaker surgery didn't leave him unscathed and he has some numbness on his left side that shows up in a limp that you'd only notice if you knew him before and a left hand that doesn't work as well as it used to. He was a man of few words before but the coma forced him to relearn his ability to speak and sometimes, even after speech therapy, he can't say the words even when he wants to. It takes him a good fifteen minutes before he finally overcomes the battle with his verbal handicap, his pride, and all the other emotions that must be warring deep within the depths of those hazel eyes as he looks at her for the first time.

"You solved Sandbrook."

Ellie feels her own heart breaking all over again, because he has no idea how wrong he is and how much of a role he himself played. She looks away from him, out over the water, and thinks of that day on the beach when she threw the bloody plaque at him and he told her he wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

"How'd you do it?" he asks, when she doesn't say anything more. "I won't tell anyone." He has to search for the words carefully and feel them out. "I just – I _need_ to know how."

Ellie stares at him and sees a shadow of the look in his eyes when he finally turned to her that day on the beach so long ago.

"I had some help."

"Tess," Alec agrees, but his mouth opens and closes.

"What's bothering you?" Ellie asks and belatedly realizes that while they'd blackmailed and bribed Tess they'd never banked on the fact that Alec himself wouldn't remember. If their positions had been reversed…

"Someone told you... had to be someone else –" Ellie shakes her head, but Alec keeps going almost slurring his speech as he gets more upset with the things that aren't adding up as well as his labored progress. "Donnae fuckin' lie to me, Millah!"

"I'm not lying!" Ellie snaps and stands up from the bench. She runs her fingers through her hair. "You told me everything, you just can't bloody remember!" Spinning around, she stabs a finger in his direction. "And I never wanted credit for ANY of this, but then you had to go and have another fucking heart attack on me in the middle of everything! I was right there when you coded and I thought you died, and the last thing you told me was to solve that bloody case." She's breathing hard by this point and he's pushing himself to his feet. She paces away from him and then comes back immediately, almost plowing him over. "I only solved that case because of _you_. I broke into your shack and I tore through all the files and I convinced Tess to help me. But I solved it using _your_ evidence. And if they'd fucking let me I would give you the stupid plaque, your old job back, and all the credit, but they won't."

They stand inches apart and for the first time Ellie sees a flicker of doubt in Alec's eyes, but he's no longer doubting her.

"I know it doesn't make sense, but Hardy I'm asking you to trust me because one day you'll remember what really happened and you'll know why, and if you don't…" She trails off and Alec frowns. He'll never believe her. He waits but she doesn't elaborate and he sighs. Then he nods.

"You'll tell me eventually?"

"You'll remember," Ellie reassures him, even though she knows he won't, but Alec's in no state to handle the truth right now. One day, maybe, but not today. They sit back down on the bench by the water and they don't say anything at all until Ellie's lunchbreak is over. Ellie says goodbye and wonders when or if she'll ever see him again.

* * *

 _~~~~ALEC~~~~_

Alec finds himself sitting next to Ellie Miller two days after Daisy sends him back to her. He listens to her endless babbling that he has missed so much. And all he wants to do is talk back but for the life of him, he can't. When she stops it takes him an eternity to articulate one sentence and not to appear like a complete moron.

"You solved Sandbrook." He hates the way his voice sounds now, hollow and toneless, devoid of the emotion he might be feeling, because if he lets that in, the words will never find their way out. He's hiding the memory of the beach, fearing she might just walk away if he says anything.

She dodges his question and he barely can follow up with something coherent. When he insists it must have been someone else other than Tess who helped her, she blows up in his face. And then she says _it,_ confesses it was _him_ who told her everything. His heart rate goes up and with his inner turmoil distracting him, he almost misses when she explains everything away.

They're standing inches apart. Last time they were this close has been what seems a lifetime ago. And maybe it never happened. But there's this look in her eyes, that makes him doubt reality as he knows it and maybe, just maybe he isn't crazy after all.

"I know it doesn't make sense, but Hardy I'm asking you to trust me because one day you'll remember what really happened and you'll know why, and if you don't…" Ellie trails off and he frowns. She'll never believe him. He waits for her to go on but she doesn't elaborate and he sighs. If the past year has taught him one thing, it is patience, so he doesn't force the issue on this day. He's just happy to be with her again.

He nods, working on the sentence until he can get it out.

"You'll tell me eventually?"

"You'll remember." She doesn't look at him and he curses inside, wild with the pent up fury and frustration that he simply can't explain that he does. But then she probably is only referring to him telling her about Sandbrook before he died anyways, because everything else is so impossible to believe that he forbids himself to indulge in the thought. They sit in silence until she has to leave. When she's gone, he feels like an empty shell.

* * *

He keeps coming back to her, because he can't leave. It is odd to think of how much it resembles the last time he was with her. And again she lets him be part of her life. He can't shake the memory and there are too many moments when the now and then blend together and he forgets where and when he is. His doctors say it's his damaged brain playing tricks on him but he knows better. It's those moments when their hands accidentally brush and she flinches that make him wonder if he might not be crazy, when Ellie seems to remember as well.

Fred sure does. When Alec sees him again, it's almost too much for his heart. It's the little boy of his dreams who was the first who had seen him, even before Ellie, and when Ellie calls him _Uncle Alec,_ his emotions threaten to overwhelm him. The struggle turns him into a stoic and silent person that Fred doesn't recognize. They eye each other like worthy opponents, locked in a dance of disbelief and readjustment. But then Fred trips over him, not used to his solid form and Alec scoops him up, cradling his tiny body against his warm chest and it is as if nothing ever happened.

He goes to the beach with them. Fred is piling sand on him and to his own surprise he enjoys it more than he should have. His last time on a beach had been with Ellie. This time he doesn't mind the sand, he knows now how important it is to savor the very few good moments in one's life. He can't be happier watching Ellie chasing after her children. Until they walk back and Ellie sees him struggling and stumbling along the sand. Maybe it's because he feels vulnerable or embarrassed, but when she takes his limp left hand something sparks in him and he snarls at her and pulls away. The anger over his inability to even tolerate a simple gesture like that shows in his eyes, and Ellie retreats, discouraged, never to touch him again. He can't even begin to put in words how much he hates himself at that moment.

* * *

 _~~~~ELLIE~~~~_

She wonders when or if she'll ever see him again after she leaves him behind on the bench.

But she does. He shows up randomly at the station and she makes him a cup of decaf tea. He brings her a cup of coffee and they go to lunch, and he snoops through her latest casefile and winds up solving the damn thing that stumped her and her co-workers for two weeks in one hour long lunchbreak, proving that although he'll never be fit for duty and he can't communicate that well verbally (although his social skills were lacking to begin with) there's nothing wrong with his brain. She starts bringing more casefiles for him, and he goes with her back to the station, and starts going home with her too.

The reunion between him and Fred is bittersweet. Ellie screws up and calls him _Uncle Alec_ , but Alec doesn't seem to remember meeting Fred and Fred has a hard time wrapping his young mind around the fact that the solid standoffish silent man in front of him is the same man that at one point told him stories and showed up at all hours of the day and night to soothe him when Ellie couldn't. But on the second visit, Fred trips over Alec's long legs and Alec automatically sweeps him up with his right arm. The two stare at each other, equally shocked, and then Hardy smiles when Fred curiously touches his beard. And Fred laughs and Ellie can almost pretend that they do recognize each other after all.

Sometimes Ellie thinks that Alec does remember. She sees him with Fred, and then their hands will meet over a casefile and Alec will instinctively flinch, but the moment passes. One day he voluntarily goes with them to the beach. Fred dumps a whole bucket of sand over his head and he laughs it off and tells her he doesn't mind the sand anymore. Before she can stop herself, she's brushing his windswept hair back from his forehead. The sun hits his eyes and she swears for a split second she sees that same look burning in his eyes from that last day on the beach. But then Tom and Fred come at them with pails full of water, and the spark is doused along with the two of them as what could have been a moment dissolves into the sound of her high pitched shriek and her youngest child's melodious giggle. She chases her sons instead of that flash in Alec's eyes, and the sun sinks down, and Alec watches them from a distance until it's time for them to go home. She lets the boys run ahead and tries to read Alec's silence and shadowed face as he painstakingly and clumsily navigates the rocky beach beside her. And then she reaches out and takes his hand. It's his left hand, the one with less feeling, and Alec gives her a look that withers that blossoming hope and snarls something incoherent that extinguishes that spark. Ellie drops his hand and never picks it up again.

* * *

Another year passes quickly as Ellie fights for Alec to be hired after her third D.S. quits on her. Eventually her CS works something out and Ellie gets her wish. Alec becomes her somewhat unofficial partner and gets paid for it. Their track record is too good for anyone to argue that Alec's unfit and they shy away from the spotlight. The months pass and Alec and Ellie keep going case after case until something comes along that neither of them are prepared for.

Steve the "psychic", of all people, attempts to weasel himself into their latest case in the form of a cryptic message for Alec. Unfortunately, Ellie is present, and although it means absolutely nothing to Alec, it means _everything_ to Ellie. She tosses Steve out and hides in the bathroom until Alec fucking Hardy drags her out of there, out of the station, and out onto that same bench overlooking the water that they sat on more than a year ago.

He wants to know why some crackpot knows more about how she solved Sandbrook than he does, and he wants the truth, and he wants it _now_. He's been patient for so long that Ellie almost forgot that one day she'd have to try to tell him what happened.

"You're going to think that I'm crazy," Ellie begins, sighing.

Alec shrugs, confirming the suspicion that she's had for a while that he already thinks she's gone slightly mad since his coma. So, she tells him, skimming over the details until he barks at her again to tell him the bloody truth. He forces her to go back to the beginning and that fucking field of bluebells where he had a heart attack that left her crying on a bench outside the hospital. She's not even halfway through when Alec's pacemaker goes off. Or at least that's what she assumes happened. He's slumped over with one hand pressed to his chest and the other covering his eyes. She takes one look at his shaking shoulders and stops in mid-sentence.

"Alec?"

"Keep goin'!" he growls at her.

"Forget it. Let's just pretend I never said anything or you can continue to think that I'm barking mad –"

" _Ellie_."

He never uses her first name and the sound of it on his labored tongue stops her and makes her look at him, really _look_ at him and the way he's curled in on himself, hiding his face from her.

"Keep going," he orders her, carefully enunciating the syllables in a manner that must've cost him a lot of effort, considering how hard he's trying to hold himself together.

So, she does.

When she's finished, Alec sits up slowly and painfully, and gazes out at the water beyond them.

"That's all? That's _everything_ that happened?" His voice is thick but she's so used to his slurred speech by now to understand him better than he sometimes understands himself.

Ellie hesitates. She told him everything about the case, but she stopped after she received that bloody plaque that she didn't deserve.

"Tess took you off the ventilator the next day," she informs him, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips in spite of all that had been said and all that was to come when he didn't believe her. "And that's when you started breathing on your own and you decided you wanted to live." She turns to him and smiles ruefully.

She misses that man that sniggered every time he got her kicked out of his hospital room, and chattered in her ear, and showed up at all hours of the day and night to scare the living daylights out of her and keep her and her son company when she needed it most. And she misses the man that was so cold that it hurt but he kept reaching for her because he had nothing else to hang onto; and she misses the man that was so warm that it burned when he kissed her on that last morning before he left her. But she'll miss this quiet man that's still a little bit numb and a little bit broken, but that still shows up on her doorstep when she needs him most and became her partner in more ways than he'll ever understand. A part of her had been withholding the truth, in hope that one day, that respect that he still clearly has for her might just develop into something more, and maybe, just maybe she'd catch that spark in his eye again and this time she wouldn't let that moment go.

"You think I've gone mad," she laughs hysterically.

Alec turns to her for the first time since she started telling him the truth and the laughter dies on her lips. His eyes are bloodshot and he's obviously been crying. And she thinks that maybe, just maybe he doesn't think she's mad after all.

"I –" he stops and Ellie knows that his lack of speech has nothing to do with his impediment. He scrapes his hands over his face and wipes at his eyes. More than anything, Ellie wants to wrap her arms around him and pull him close, but Alec flinches every time their skin comes close. Today, he actually _jumps_ when she touches him and they both get to their feet. Alec can't look at her, and Ellie is trying so hard to ignore the lump in her throat that's making it hard to breathe.

"You said you wanted the truth," she says at last, folding her arms over her chest. She looks out over the water and into the last rays of the sinking sun. "You don't have to believe me but please don't hold it against me. We can forget this whole thing ever happened for the sake of our professional relationship."

" _Professional_ ," Alec repeats and Ellie turns to find him right next to her. He stares at her for a long moment and in spite of almost two years of wordless communication, Ellie doesn't understand him or that blazing look in his red-rimmed eyes. He thinks she's crazy, she's certain of it, and even after years of getting used to the idea, it still hurts.

"I'll give you some time to process it, and if you don't believe me or if you don't want to work with me anymore…" She can't bring herself to finish that thought because it's the last thing she wants, but she'll do it for him if that's what he wants. "Text me when you're…" She trails off again and shrugs. And then she turns her back on him and walks away.

* * *

 _~~~~ALEC~~~~_

Time passes and he's content to be close to her, be as much of a companion as he can be in his broken form of existence. She never tells him about those weeks, and he never asks. Maybe not knowing is better. At least he still has her.

And then Steve recognizes him. Recognizes him for what he was and maybe in a way still is. Steve makes a remark to Ellie that spooks her and sends her running. He follows her and drags her out in the open, not being able to suppress his desire for the truth to come out any longer. He needs to know, here and now. No more hiding.

He listens to her story and his heart contracts and chokes him off together with his silent sobs. It isn't all just in his feeble mind. She had seen him, talked to him, touched him. And then she stops. She never talks about the beach or the night and the morning after.

"You think I've gone mad," she laughs hysterically.

 _Oh, Ellie_. That's the last thing on his mind. He opens his mouth to tell her everything that he feels, but all that comes out is "I…" and his brain denies him any other means to close the distance between them. When she touches him, he jumps because for a moment the now and then is one and his body remembers all the times they hurt each other by something as simple as brushing their fingers together.

They stand together but he can't look at her, too upset to keep it together. She stares out in the ocean and when she addresses him again she talks as if all of this never happened. All he processes is the word 'professional' and he echoes it back to her without being able to even add as much as one syllable to it. He desperately attempts to tell her all that he feels, that all he wants is anything but a professional relationship and that he doesn't care about it, but his words fail him and despite the blind understanding they often share, on this day they're not graced with it. She walks away and he's left behind in the cold, now that the sun is setting.

* * *

 _~~~~ELLIE~~~_

His gaze follows her, burning holes into the back of her orange jacket; but she keeps going until the sun sets and she reaches her car. She cries the whole way home because she doesn't think she'll ever see him again.

But she does.

He doesn't show up for work until Thursday, almost a whole week later. She doesn't know what to say to him, so she passes him the file she's working on and he accepts it. She's glad and disappointed at the same time, because he must've decided to forget the whole thing. They work in silence for an hour or two until she looks up and finds Alec staring at her and realizes that he hasn't been working at all. Before she can ask him why, he reaches over and shoves everything she'd been trying to read and organize back into the file.

" _Wanker_!" she hisses, but he's not listening.

He gets up and puts on his coat. He tosses her orange jacket to her and then he's out the door. Ellie stands there for a full ten minutes before she decides to go after him. Or perhaps it was longer than ten minutes because he's nowhere to be found. She goes to the place where they usually have lunch, and then she goes to the place where she likes to drag him when she wants really good coffee, and then she goes back to the bench overlooking the water and that's where she finds him. Her breath catches in her throat when she finally spots him down on the beach. It's like déjà vu and for a moment she can almost pretend that it's _him_ again. She runs along the wall until she reaches the opening, and then she's stumbling and tripping down the beach toward him. There are more rocks here and the beach is narrower. It's not Broadchurch, but as Ellie breathes in the smell of salt and the wind whips through her hair, she can almost imagine that they're back there again, back at the start, at the end of everything…

He doesn't look up when she approaches him and Ellie thinks that maybe she should just keep going. But instead she kicks aside a few of the rocks and sits down uncomfortably beside him. It's cold again, but this time it's only partly due to the man beside her. She almost misses the way she could always sense that he was near. But as she watches him out of the corner of her eye, she realizes that she'll miss this man just as much, if not more… And all at once she knows that she's fallen in love with him all over again. The ocean and the sky blur together and she blinks back tears because she'll lose him all over again, she knows she will, and it's not fair. It's not fair at all. Picking up a rock, she hurls it into the ocean.

Alec moves for the first time since she sat down, and his eyes follow the trajectory of the second rock and the splash as it sinks into the ocean. Then he blinks and turns slightly toward her.

"You should've told me," he says at last.

"You weren't ready," Ellie protests and focuses on digging up another rock between them. "And I knew you'd never believe me." She frees the rock and chucks it into the ocean. She hears the waves bringing it back in with the force of the current, grinding rocks and sand, sucking them in, chewing them up, and spitting them back out. This beach is littered with debris, and nothing that ever goes into the ocean comes out in the same place or in the same way. Ellie focuses on the water, creeping closer with each new wave, and she waits for it to reach their shoes and sweep them away along with everything else. She wonders if maybe that tide can erase that space between them and put everything back to the way it was before he knew the truth, when she was willing to settle for a little bit of respect and company and nothing more. Ellie squeezes her eyes shut and tries so hard not to cry. That's when she hears it.

* * *

 _~~~~ALEC~~~~_

Alec barely has the will and energy to go back to the office, even after having come back from the dead. When she finally gets his silent message he runs, faster than he thinks he can, away from everything until he finds himself on the beach again.

He watches her from the corner of his eye. His left hand is resting on the sand, barely letting him sense anything. She's throwing rocks into the ocean.

"You should've told me," he finally wills his mouth to say.

"You weren't ready," Ellie protests and focuses on digging up another rock between them. His inner voice that doesn't have an outlet anymore screams and yells at her for being such a bloody idiot. He had come to her as ready as he could ever be. She lets the rocks go and squeezes her eyes shut, barely hiding her anguish. He also reaches for the stones. They feel good in his hand and he tosses one in the ocean. And another. Until there are no more on his right side. But there are some on the left. He painfully curls his fingers around one and limply throws it towards the ocean. He tries again. He isn't going to be defeated. And the stone makes it into the water, the ocean swallowing it with a most satisfying plop. He smiles and Ellie mirrors his smile.

No, he isn't going to be defeated. He leans back and deliberately brushes her hand. Then with all the courage he can muster he moves his hand over hers, sand in between them like so many years ago.

"Can you feel that?" she wonders. And he knows she remembers. A fire that he hasn't felt in years sparks inside his chest and fills him up with light and warmth. One by one he wills his fingers to lace into hers.

"I won't ever get back… all the feeling,"- he struggles, pushing himself to go on - "…at least now I can…" and once again his words leave him but now it doesn't matter anymore because he knows what he needs to do. His left hand clumsily comes up to her cheek and for all the incoordination he has, it could not be a gentler caress.

"Can you feel that?" he wonders softly.

He can see the moment she realizes what it means. His hand falls down, tired from the strain but it has fulfilled its task. When she lunges against his chest it almost takes the air out of him but he feels strong enough to withstand everything. Her hand burns his chest over his racing heart.

"You remember?" she asks hopefully. He nods, mouth slightly open

"How could I forget?" he replies, and he hears his own voice breaking. He's losing his breath and forcing his brain to do his bidding, fighting his emotions, desperately trying not to get overwhelmed.

"I dreamed…all the time, and… and then Fred…he gave me that… bloody unicorn and I –" His voice cracks and he's past the point where he can articulate anything. Ellie has no idea how close to collapsing he really is when she kisses the same spot on his chest that she had that day on the beach.

"It felt real," he whispers, not wanting to break the moment with anything.

"It was to me," Ellie admits softly and presses closer to him. He pulls her in tightly and they sit while the ocean calms and finally their tears do so as well.

* * *

 _~~~~ELLIE~~~~_

She opens her eyes as Alec tosses another rock into the ocean. And another. And another. The next one falls short and Ellie realizes why. He's using his left hand now - the one that has so very little feeling - and he's curling those numb fingers into the rocky, grainy, damp sand between them. He scrapes it up out of the sand through sheer force of will and curves his hand around it. And when he pulls back his arm and lets it go, this time it hits the ocean. He smiles and Ellie smiles too, because after months and months of physical therapy and ridiculous exercises that he usually ignored, he can finally do something so simple that used to come to him so easily.

He sits back and puts his hand down in the sand beside her, and their fingers overlap. Ellie freezes but Alec doesn't flinch or jump away from her or do anything. She wonders if he can even feel her at all, and then suddenly his gritty hand is clumsily covering hers.

"Can you feel that?" she wonders and he carefully and painstakingly slots his fingers between her own. He looks up at her and his eyes are bright with a light she never thought she'd ever see again.

"I won't ever get back… all the feeling,"- he struggles, and it hurts to see him like that - "…at least now I can…" His forehead creases and he wiggles his fingers free from hers. She misses the contact immediately, but then he's shifting closer to her and his hand is against her cheek. Ellie holds her breath as his fingers tremble against her jaw and then drag over her cheek in the roughest but sweetest caress.

"Can you feel that?" he wonders softly.

Ellie nods, and then she gasps because they've had this conversation before on a beach years ago when no one could see him but her. Alec drops his hand and starts to pull back, but Ellie refuses to let him leave her, not now. She lunges at him and he catches her against his chest, surprising both of them. She presses her palm flat against his racing but steady heart, and looks up at him.

"You remember?" she asks, daring to hope. Alec nods.

"How could I forget?" he replies, his voice breaking. Ellie feels his chest heaving beneath her as he struggles to keep all those emotions in check. "I dreamed…all the time, and… and then Fred… he gave me that… bloody unicorn and I –" His voice cracks and he's past the point where he can articulate anything. Ellie lowers her head to his chest and kisses the spot where his heart now beats, recalling that moment so long ago when there was nothing but a black cold hole, and yet he was still able to make her feel warmer than anyone else.

"It felt real," he whispers.

"It was to me," Ellie admits softly and presses closer to him and that warm body. Alec holds her closer as the wind switches yet again and the water calms. The clouds are clearing and the sun is low in the sky by the time they're done shedding all those silent tears that have built up over the years.

"I still don't understand what happened or how it happened or why I was the only one that could see, hear and feel you…" she says at last, trailing off as his heart beats against her cheek and his hands rub over her back. His hands still and Ellie lifts her head so that she can look at him. He takes a long time answering her, but his left hand is slowly trailing along her cheek and her eyes are closing as his breath warms her face.

"We'll never understand, Miller," he murmurs and nudges her nose with his. "But I know why it was _you_."

"Why?" she breathes.

He kisses her and she understands. The words are too hard for him, but Ellie hears them and feels them in the press of his lips and the way he forces his limp fingers to curl at the nape of her neck, urging her closer, always closer. She used to find it ironic that a "dead" man had made her feel so alive, but he came back from the brink of death for her, and in a way he brought her back too.

It's nearly dark by the time they walk up the beach and back to her car. This time they leave two trails of footprints in the sand and when Ellie reaches out and takes his hand, he doesn't pull away but instead tries to hold on. He kisses her cheek when they reach the car and Ellie thinks back to that night that they thought would be their last and she saw that shooting star like a fleeting flash of hope and she wonders.

"What'd you wish for that night…?"

"This," he confesses and he kisses her like it's the last time and the first time. It feels like the end again but Ellie knows that this time that spark is only the beginning. They break apart breathless and grinning, and Ellie takes him home with her.

* * *

 _~~~~ALEC~~~~_

When she questions the why, he can't give her an answer in words. He'll never be able to again and for all he knows he would never have been to begin with. It doesn't need to be said. They walk back and he lets her take his hand which has so much become the symbol of all his shame and feeling of being nothing but a dysfunctional mess. He tries to hold on and when he fails she's right there to grab him tightly and doesn't let go.

She asks him about the shooting star. This time he doesn't even bother with the words. Ellie takes him home that day and makes sure he'll never leave again.

* * *

When they're lying in bed that night, curled up into each other, he asks her for a favor.

"Daisy…" Exhaustion makes it hard to even formulate the shortest sentences. "She sent me… to seek you out… after…" He gives up, climbs out of the bed, finds his jacket pocket and digs out the piece of paper he has scribbled on more than a year ago. He hands it to Ellie who reads it with her eyes growing wider and wider just as Daisy's had.

He grabs his phone, pulls up Daisy's number and sticks it out to Ellie. He doesn't use his phone much, but he knows Daisy will pick up, even if it is late. She never misses any of his calls, not anymore.

"Please… Tell her it's okay now." He pleads with his eyes. And like so many years ago when he had asked her to help him with the Sandbrook case, she agrees.

He lays back on the pillow listening to the one-sided conversation.

"Hi Daisy. No, he's fine. Don't worry. This is Ellie Stevens." She pauses and listens.

"No, for sure, he's all right. In fact he's lying here right next to me." She grins at his embarrassed groan.

"Did you hear that? He's still his usual grumpy self in case you're wondering. Nothing changed there." She chuckles at something Daisy says. And although he's sure it's at his expense, he's happy.

"He wants me to tell you that it's okay now. His words. What I think he really means is to tell you that we finally talked." Her voice is serious now. "Yes, we did and it seems that neither one of us is a lunatic. Or maybe it was a group hallucination. Either way, as he said, it's okay now."

He opens his eyes and gestures for her to give him the phone.

"He wants to talk to you. You should come down soon and meet up with us. Bye Daisy." She hands him the phone and smiles.

He focuses as much as he can while Ellie's running her fingers through his hair. As if talking isn't already hard enough for him. "Darlin' thank you… for sending me," he slowly says, making an effort to not slur the words. He hears a muffled noise on the other side and a suspicion that she's crying is rising in him. "Don't… don't cry. Please?"

"Ach, I'm not crying Dad. You're the soppy one not me." He smiles while he listens to her telling him how happy she is that it finally worked out and how she can't wait to come there and meet everyone. She babbles on about how nice it'll be to get out of the house during her university break as Dave's snoring so loudly ever since Alec has broken his nose that there's no sleep to be had. That makes him laugh and she joins in. She falls silent for a moment, before she continues with her goodbye.

"I love you Dad, never forget that. And I know you will always be by my side. So will I."

"I love you too, darlin'," he replies fondly and ends the call. Ellie's watching him quietly. Then without another word she kisses him gently, letting her forehead rest against his when their lips part.

"I love you, Alec," she whispers.

His mind immediately mirrors her words but his tongue does not obey and he completely locks up. There's no way for him to say it back and he grows more and more frantic with every second that passes. He opens and closes his mouth, but he just can't. Frustrated tears are welling up and he's panting. Then he feels her warm hands on his heart and cheek.

"You don't have to say it. I know it's there. I can see it in your eyes." She smiles and kisses him again. And when her soft lips leave his mouth open the words tumble out without the struggle.

"I love you, Ellie."

* * *

 **Hazelmist's A/N:** I honestly was going to end it after Alec died because it felt like the end of _my_ story; but then mykelara begged me not to kill him off, and Ellie looked up and Alec was standing there, wanting to know how the hell she solved Sandbrook but he couldn't speak. So, a bloody miracle happened. I warned mykelara that things were about to get even stranger in the second part, but instead of laughing at me like I thought she would, suddenly THIS STORY showed up in my inbox. I didn't realize that I'd LITERALLY silenced Alec until mykelara wrote his side of the story and GAVE HIM BACK HIS VOICE. I can't thank her enough. If it wasn't for her I never would've finished or posted the story. This part was written for her and I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was to see her fill in the blank spaces and gaping holes I'd left in my wake and blend the two parts together so beautifully that it made me cry the first time I read it. THANK YOU. She deserves all of the credit, seriously, she's BRILLIANT!

 **Mykelara's A/N:** Hazelmist had told me about this story for WEEKS lovingly referring to it as the "WTF beach story" – I had no idea what to expect and then I read it and was blown away. And I wrote her a frantic note… "You can't let him die, please, don't let him die, please?!" I who always goes on about how Alec Hardy should have died because of all the silly bluebell metaphors couldn't in the end handle it. So she took pity with me and wrote the continuation… which got to me almost even more than Part 1. This story had touched me on so many levels (and still does every time I read it) that I didn't even know what to say (and I'm not often at a loss of words). And so a strong desire to thank hazelmist grew inside me and I wanted to pay back, give her a gift just as much as she had given me one… and so Alec found a voice… I guess she must have liked it enough to be so kind and let me put it all together and that's how part 2 came about. I hope you liked it despite some repeating themes and are not too disappointed that I interfered with her beautiful writing.

I feel honored that she let me be part of it and I take no credit for the original story because the brilliance that's behind it is all hazelmist's. This is dedicated to her – because she's INCREDIBLE… and my grandfather – because there is more to life than what we can see and I know you're happy now wherever you might be.


End file.
